50+ Things I Love About You!

This morning I received a subscriber email from Dr. Diane Gehart. In it, she talked about writing a list of 50 things she loves about the people in her life and how their faces are filled with delight when they read them. As a result, her heart is lifted and all I can see is a sea of warmth and pleasant feelings swimming all around.

Since I'm not partnered and figuring out my friendships as an adult (blog post coming soon), don't even get me started on family dynamics, I decided to write 50 things I like about myself. Of course at first I thought, can I really come up with 50? How many times as a therapist have I given my clients this exercise (usually 10)? Is it insincere for me to suggest exercises that I myself haven't tested out? This year at least, I want to attempt the exercises I recommend to my clients. I might just do it here, who knows? Should they struggle with any of the exercises, I can validate their experience and support them by being like, "When I did it, I felt this too! This is what helped me." Then we can work together and get through it. I'll also take a few minutes to explore what feelings or thoughts may have been activated and we can process them together. Wow, don't therapists rock? *shameless plug*

Anyway, before I get carried away, here are 50+ things I love about me in no particular order.

Photo by Amy Shamblen on Unsplash

1. My sense of humor and sometimes near-perfect comedic timing!

2. How much I love food and how it interests me. I love how my brain goes to work whenever I eat something and experience complexity in flavours.

3. How much effort I put into cooking and trying out new recipes. Even if they backfire, I still keep at it. I love that I am a self-taught baker.

4. My bubbly personality.

5. How intrigued I am with the world, different cultures, foods, and languages.

6. My love for learning and how inquisitive I get when a certain subject interests me,

7. My appreciation of beautiful things think flowers, outfits, cars, spaces in homes etc, and just how excited I get when I want to point it out.

8. My attention to detail.

9. My call-it-like-it-is nature. A no-bullshitting attitude.

10. My ability to care for all those that I love and how hard I go for them.

11. How I show love by making/ buying gifts for those I love and care for.

12. My desire to always be kind and show compassion to others.

13. My obsession with cats. I take great pride in how much love I shower my cat Mickey with.

14. How much affection I feel towards animals (insects and cockroaches don't count🤢).

15. My psyche whenever I'm working towards a new goal or starting something new (that I'm in control of and not overthinking).

16. My desire to live a healthy and meaningful life. I love how my body would surprise me when I committed to going to the gym before the pandemic began. I now strive to eat healthier as I make plans to go back to the gym.

17. My body. Lately, I've been looking at my naked body in the mirror and I'm like daaaaaamn 🤤

18. How excited I get when I get into a new book.

19. The beautiful products my hands create while crocheting.

20. My company especially when snuggled up in bed, watching a series, and having a nice glass of wine.

21. My authenticity.

22. My feet.

23. My fingernails when I let them grow.

24. How my face lights up as I share with excitement something new I've learned with the people around me.

25. The peace I feel when I'm at the beach or around other large water bodies. Also when in nature.

26. My efforts to heal from the emotional trauma I've been through even when it's uncomfortable.

27. My career as a therapist and how far I see myself going.

28. The feeling I get when I've helped someone, especially as a therapist.

29. My growth as a human. It is constantly happening and evolving.

30. How much I strive to work on myself and incorporate any new information I get from people I look up to.

31. My hair especially after washing it and seeing my naturally defined curls.

32. My ability to adapt to people within different environments.

33. My strong belief in feminism and how much I love being a woman.

34. My opinionated nature.

35. How I really don't give a fuck about people's opinions (The what-will-people-say nonsense).

36. The duality that is me. I feel like I in certain things I am neither on both ends of the extreme like with music, personality, thoughts about the world etc.

37. My sexuality.

38. My love for nice warm bear hugs from people who smell nice and are taller than me😊

39. My excitement after playing around with makeup and ending up with an amazing face beat especially when I use false lashes.

40. My handwriting and how it changes depending on my mood or pen 😁

41. My discovery of the body positivity movement and how it completely transformed the way I look at myself.

42. How I say, "I need to do this for future Jacquie. She'll be proud."

43. Also when I say, "I'm so grateful that previous Jacquie did this so, I get to have a pleasant experience in the present as a result."

44. My ability to rationalize talking to anyone and just seeing them as human no matter what title they hold.

45. The days when I'm confident and feel like the world is mine.

46. My ability to advocate for myself and my needs (a work in progress).

47. Aspects of me that are introverted which make me a little shy at times.

48. My adventurous spirit but pure aversion towards camping😏

49. My ability to have conversations with myself (mostly out loud), whether in cheering myself on or giving myself a pep talk.

50. How I review conversations in my mind after hanging out with people for some time.

51. My mind. My brilliance baffles me at times!

52. My taste in music especially when it's ratchet😂

53. The dreams I have for my future. I love the progress I've seen in slowly regaining this after going through a bout of depression a couple of years back.

54. My desire to always be better than I am now, and the awareness to detect when I'm not quite putting in the work.

55. My ability to be kind to me.

56. My ability to make decisions to leave things that aren't working for me like religion.

57. My writing. How words just flow through me especially when I'm in the zone.

58. My views about love, partnership, and independence.

I'm actually surprised I thought about all this. Went past 50 things. I feel a sense of pride that I am able to see all this in me. At the same time, I honor the things that will take me some time to work on. At some points during this exercise, a part of my brain wanted to quantify certain things. Like, "You don't do that all the time. When was the last time you honestly did that? Ai would other people agree? Then there's a part of me, the compassionate Jacquie I'm trying to nurture. She's like, "No. Stop that. It doesn't make you less deserving of love. All versions of you are worth loving. That doesn't make you less of a human." I love her! I one day hope to do this exercise for the people I care about. Who knows, one day I might receive the same from someone special! Universe, I hope you're listening 😉 Why don't you try this exercise with yourself or someone you care about. How do you feel after? Let me know below!

And now to address the elephant in the room...

I know I've been away from my blog for a while. First of all, Happy New Year! And Happy Valentine's Day if you celebrate it 😊 I can think of many reasons why I've been away but I can summarise it to lack of consistency and life! I started a new job last August after years of unemployment so I'm sort of figuring that out (still am😬). There are also some changes coming up that I'm trying to wrap my head around. I'm hoping that my return to blogging will offer some much-needed grounding in the next few months. I've actually been writing. Some posts are 70% done, others completely done. All I need to do is just press publish, so I'll try to figure it out as things go along. I badly want to commit to x number of posts a month but I'm afraid of not following through. I really struggle with this. I'll just post when I feel it's right. I know I can at least do 1 post monthly. That feels doable. Let's see how this goes. Thanks for reading 😊